Encyclopedia

DRIVERS: BERND SCHNEIDER

Named after the great pre-war racing driver Bernd Rosemeyer, Schneider grew up in a family which was keen on motor racing. His home was in Saarbrucken, not far from the Nurburgring, and the young Bernd started racing karts early. He was the German Junior Kart Champion at the age of 15. The following year (1980) he repeated the achievement and won the World Junior Kart title as well. Two years later he won the European Formula A title. In 1984 he switched to Formula Ford and finished second in the German title. After a year in Formula Ford 2000 he began racing in Formula 3 in 1986 with Kees Van der Grint's ACE team. He finished third. The following year he switched to Schubel Motorsport and won seven races to take the German title.

This success catapulted him into Formula 1 with the Zakspeed team which was struggling with its own engines. The following year the switch to Yamaha engines was a huge disaster and Schneider's hopes of an F1 career were seriously damaged. He did a couple of races with Arrows, hoping that the Porsche connection would save his career but then drifted off into sports cars.

He won the Porsche Cup in 1990, raced in the World Sports Car Championship with Kremer and Joest and then began his career in DTM with a ZakspeedMercedes-Benz. At the end of 1991 he gave sports cars up completely and became an AMG factory Mercedes-Benz driver. In 1995 he won his first title. He was runner-up in the ITC in 1996 and won the FIA GT title in 1997 with the AMG Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR. He stayed with GTs in 1998 and 1999 but then went back to DTM and won the title in 2000, 2001 and 2003.